McDonald's employee Connie Ogletree, 55, right, leads a group of fast food workers and supporters in a chant during a protest outside a Krispy Kreme store on May 15, 2014, in Atlanta. Calling for higher pay and the right to form a union without retaliation, fast-food chain workers in Atlanta protested Thursday as part of a wave of strikes and protests in 150 cities across the U.S. and 33 additional countries on six continents. (David Goldman | AP Photo) (David Goldman)

By Stephen Sweeney and Vincent Prieto

Too many of our fellow New Jerseyans go to work every day, some to two jobs, and do not make enough money to put food on the table, pay the heating and electric bills, and clothe and put a roof over their children's heads.

For too long, the ranks of the working poor have been growing, the middle class has been shrinking, and more and more of the wealth of our society has been flowing into the pockets of the richest 1 percent.

That is why we have joined together to put New Jersey at the forefront of the "Fight For $15" movement by introducing legislation to raise the minimum wage from the current $8.38 an hour to $10.10, and to establish a schedule that will provide all of our state's workers a living wage of over $15 an hour five years after the new measure takes effect.

We are introducing our plan as legislation, but if it is vetoed by the governor, we will put it on the ballot as a constitutional amendment for the voters to decide.

Across the nation, state and city officials and voters are saying no to poverty, and yes to the need to restore the high-wage, high-growth economy that propelled consumer spending and an unparalleled era of shared prosperity for all American workers for three decades following World War II.

The phase-in we are proposing is a balanced approach that provides businesses time to plan, and most important, lets workers and their families know that better times are ahead.

Contrary to what the Governor and business lobbyists want you to believe, the $10.10 wage we are proposing to enact will not hurt New Jersey's competitiveness. It will create more jobs at better pay.

Massachusetts, California and Vermont all have a statewide minimum wage over $10, with Oregon soon to follow. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing for a $15 minimum wage. Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., will all reach $15 by 2020, and Chicago will hit $13 in 2019. Even Birmingham, Alabama, and Lexington, Kentucky - whose cost of living is much lower than New Jersey's - have $10.10 minimum wage increases set to go into effect.

When we put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2013 to raise the minimum wage to $8.25 and index it to the rate of inflation, business groups warned that New Jersey would lose 31,000 jobs. The people disagreed and approved the amendment by a 60% to 40% vote.

What happened? New Jersey gained 29,000 jobs in the first year that the minimum wage was increased, then added 64,000 jobs in 2015 - which the Governor has repeatedly pointed to as the largest private sector job growth in New Jersey in the last 15 years.

Raising the minimum wage is not a job killer -- it is a job creator.

Unlike the wealthy who put their tax cuts in the stock market or offshore in the Caymans, the working poor spend the increased money they receive in their local communities, which puts more money into the pockets of small business owners, grocery store clerks, appliance salesmen and gas station attendants.

According to a Chicago Federal Reserve Bank study, every $1 that a minimum wage hike puts in the pocket of the working poor generates $1.35 in increased consumer spending. That economic spinoff from increasing the minimum wage to $15 will not only put more tax dollars into the state treasury, but also will move more families and individuals toward self-sufficiency and away from reliance on government safety-net programs.

More than one third of New Jersey workers currently make less than $15 an hour, most work full-time, and one in four are parents. Despite the myth that most low wage workers are teenagers flipping burgers, the reality is that only 12 percent of low-wage earners are teens. The rest are adults, many of whom are struggling to raise a family.

It is inhumane to refuse to raise the minimum wage when the United Way of Northern New Jersey estimates that a single New Jerseyan -- with no children -- would need to earn $13.78 just to meet basic needs like food and shelter, and $19.73 to achieve basic economic stability.

To condemn hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens - many of them children - to live in poverty in one of the richest states in the nation is morally wrong.

We are proud that our party's two presidential candidates, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Sen.r Bernie Sanders, are pushing income inequality and a living wage to the forefront of the national political debate, and that it is one of our state's congressmen, Donald Norcross, who introduced legislation to ramp up to a $15 minimum wage for the entire country.

As Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich said when asked why he did an end-run around his own legislature to expand Medicaid coverage for the poor, "When you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he's probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small. But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor. You better have a good answer."

This is our answer: Let's join together and raise the minimum wage.

Senator Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) is President of the New Jersey Senate, and Assemblyman Vincent Prieto (D-Hudson) serves as Speaker of the New Jersey.